Day By Day: A Brief Collection of Zutara
by schaferdramaqueen
Summary: A handful of Zutara fics, generally compliant with A:TLA canon, sometimes compliant with Korra. "Missing moments" and possible futures. The title references a Stephen Schwartz song.
1. The Ubiquitous Healing Fic

**I wrote these for a friend's birthday, and in one of my frequent devouring-all-things-Zutara moods, I decided to post them here. I've got about a handful that I wrote for her, so I'll try to get them all up as soon as possible— they just need a little formatting.**

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_I read the first part of an A:TLA graphic novel story called "The Promise." At one point Zuko gets attacked on a diplomatic mission by a girl wielding a chain with a spiked ball on either end. I don't think he actually gets hurt beyond her dumping him on his back, but I liked the idea of the girl assassin and her weapon, so I kept them for this fic._

_(I'm not making any claim or attempt to be compatible with "The Promise" here.)_

The Ubiquitous Healing Fic

"Zuko!"

She barreled into him, knocking him back against the wall—for the _second_ time in three days, thank you very much—an explosion of furs and sodden hair. Zuko pushed her away, gritting his teeth as the movement jostled his shoulder. He stepped into the middle of the hallway, positioning himself carefully out of the way of any pointy or breakable objects. "Katara! Why are you—"

"Well of _course_ I had to come," she said, scowling at him. "Aang couldn't leave negotiations, not at this stage, but schools can wait for a bit."

"Katara—you were in _Ba Sing Se_—"

"It takes half a day for a train to the coast, and about three times that up the coastline and down the river. By myself, that is," she added. She gave him a once-over and pursed her lips. "You look awful."

She was one to talk. Katara's hair was sticking up in swirls and spikes all over her head, and her eyes were buried so deep in dark circles she looked like a raccoon-monkey. She must not have slept at all, he realized. He should have known she'd be reading all of Aang's letters, even the ones he sent specifically to the Avatar so that Katara couldn't see them.

"Stop feeling guilty, it isn't doing you any favors."

"I wasn't . . . I mean, I am, but . . ." she cut him off with a glare and pushed him down onto one of the boxes that were stacked in the hallway, half-unloaded before one little girl with a spiked chain had turned what little organization there had been upside-down. Zuko tried to tell Katara that he'd had no less than three highly experienced healers (and a fourth whom he'd had his doubts about) poking at him every five minutes since the attempt, but Katara tsk-ed and asked shrewdly whether any of them were _water_benders, and what in Tui's name he thought he was doing stopping her when they were not. When he pointed out that she was soaking wet and should probably dry off so that she didn't drip all over the fire lord's royal person, she froze his mouth shut and resumed examining him with impressive vigor.

The bandage was around his neck and his shoulder, the girl's weapon having torn through the muscle before he'd rallied enough to force her to her knees. Had to give her a point for that, Zuko thought; the girl was fast, and good with that chain of hers, though he doubted it'd hold up to his dao in a fair fight. Two points, maybe: that thing had _hurt_. The disgusting brew they'd made him drink wasn't doing much for the pain, not that he'd tell Katara that, and—"Katara, what are you doing?"

Or at least, that was what he tried to say. His mouth was still frozen shut. But Katara understood (she always understood) and smiled at him, though her fingers kept peeling back the edges of the fine white cloth, unwrapping it carefully from his flesh.

"Relax. I'm keeping everything in. I need to see it, is all." She frowned at his shoulder as the last strip of bandage fell away, brushing her hand lightly around the skin there—_it's a hundred degrees outside, Zuko, why are you shivering_—before muttering something about hedge-witches and earthbender grubby fingers. "This is going to scar," she said.

Zuko raised an eyebrow (his _only_ eyebrow) at her.

That made her laugh, which did wonders for making her look less like a drowned rat-lion, though Zuko still would have liked to get her to a hot meal and a good bed. "Shut up when I'm silencing you and let me heal, your lordliness."

Zuko gave a one-shouldered shrug and tried (and failed) to grin up at her under the ice before submitting meekly to the touch of cool water on his skin. There was something nice about it, being healed by her, especially as she wasn't begging his pardon every three seconds for touching him. _Just heal the damn thing, it doesn't matter_, he'd finally told the last healer, but that had only scared the man more.

"Relax," said Katara, gently this time. "It goes faster if you're not clenching. Remember?" She kept her left hand slowly moving the water over his shoulder and laid her right palm over his chest, over the mark that Azula—_sister_—had put there.

"I do," he said, surprised when the words got out: he hadn't noticed her taking the gag away. He reached up his hand, to put it over hers, but she had already withdrawn it and was concentrating on the newer wound, a furrow denting the skin between her eyebrows. Zuko swallowed and looked away.

"What are you going to do with her?" Katara asked after a pause. "The . . . assassin, I mean."

"I don't know," Zuko replied, his hand curling into a fist despite Katara's earlier words. "She's in one of the cells now. I didn't know this place had cells until they told me they'd put her there. For a colony town, they seem to have all the comforts of home." He felt Katara tense at the bitterness in his words, but he couldn't seem to soften them. And, fine, maybe having his own citizens try to kill him _again_ was bothering him slightly. "Traditionally, those who attempt to kill a member of the royal family are disemboweled slowly in the city square, and then their entrails are roasted before them."

The coolness drew away from his shoulder. Katara's hands dropped down to her sides. "And what do you think?"

He met her gaze. She was staring at him squarely, a fire burning fiercely behind her eyes despite the steadiness of her words. He had seen that light before, when she had caught the man who'd killed her mother. It was not the light of mercy.

"I think she will have a trial," he said, pitching his voice low so that she had to lean in further, close as she was. "And I think that I will make a decision, after hearing all that she has to say."

"Don't be kind," Katara said in the same tone.

"No. I'll be fair." The water appeared at his shoulder again, sinking deep into his flesh, drawing the breath out of him, making his head slump forward and his eyelids flicker. He lifted a hand to his shoulder and worked his fingers over the muscle, feeling the smoothness of scar tissue where Katara had joined the skin.

"Get some rest," he said, but he meant _thank you_.

"You as well," she replied. _You're welcome._

.


	2. Saving Grace

_This references that epic grab-roll-save Zuko made in the air temple, which Katara was entirely too ungrateful for._

Saving Grace

Zuko imagines he's supposed to remember everything. The spike of terror he felt for her when the rocks began to fall. The mad dash across the rumbling floor and the dive that scraped his knees and elbows raw. The feeling of her pressed close against him, safe in the circle of his arms.

But the only thing Zuko can call up is the ache of her absence when she is gone.


	3. More Than A Noseful

_Near the end of the series finale, before Zuko's coronation. Because I enjoy PTSD and making up Fire Nation culture._

More Than a Noseful

She smells him before she sees him. Or rather, she doesn't: she smells the cloud of scent that surrounds everyone in the Fire Nation, even the servants, and she gags. You would think that living in a hot place would make them realize how heat multiplies odors—but perhaps living in a perpetual fug of perfume deadened their nostrils to the fact that their prized expensive nobles stank like a baby gone smash-happy in a cartload of rotting fruit.

"How can you stand to have that stuff on you all the time?" Katara asks him. She hears him stop, though she hasn't turned around.

"Everyone smells like this around here," he says. Zuko moves beside her, mercifully downwind, so that he can look at her. "You get used to it."

"Maybe_ you_ do," she says, wrinkling her nose. Then she sees the stiffness of Zuko's shoulders and realizes that it sounded mean. Katara sighs and wraps her fingers around the railing. "Zuko . . ."

"Aang's worried about you," he says, looking out over the bay in front of them. Now it's Katara's turn to stiffen and push her feet into the smooth-tiled floor. "He wants to know if you're all right."

"Oh? And what else does Aang want to know?" He flinches and Katara knows she's being unfair, but before she can decide to apologize Zuko is turning towards her, his face heavy with unhappiness.

"It's not just Aang, Katara. We're all worried. _I'm_ worried." He's watching her and she hates him, hates herself for refusing to celebrate like the others are (his coronation is tomorrow and his family is in prison), hates the way she's jumping at shadows as if she's still running away.

"I watched you die," she says, and she strikes the railing hard with the flat of her hand because her voice has gone and broken on the last word, even though she told it not to. A flock of leopard-pigeons pecking around near the corner of the balcony erupt into the air, dropping feathers and screaming at the disturbance. She bites the inside of her cheek.

For an instant Zuko's face goes still and she sees the creature who fought her in the North, in the spirit oasis, so very long ago. She blinks and he is sad again, but now she's seeing two Zukos laid one on top of the other, the old and the new.

"Aren't you being a little insensitive? It was me that did the dying, you know." She is two steps towards him when she sees the upward tilt to his mouth. He's teasing her. She ought to hit him for that, and yet somehow she's smiling too, and the sour in her stomach is sweetening.

"Tell Aang I'm fine," she says. Zuko nods and then, quite unexpectedly, puts his arms around her and pulls her into his chest. The thick spice-and-flowers smell makes her cough but she relaxes into him, letting him take her weight and hold her upright, not even feeling sorry for it. It's awkward, because Zuko's awkward, but when she closes her eyes she doesn't see the lightning arcing towards him and at least perfume doesn't smell like burning flesh and that's enough for her to want to stay like this forever.

He stops wearing scent after that, and she thanks him and when she hugs him she gets enveloped by something that's just Zuko, home and alive and safe.


	4. The Honorable Thing

**There's one that had come before this, but it's going to be a bit until it's posted because I need to double-check the specifics of where I'm deviating from canon in it. Since these aren't really chronological, I realized that I could post this now and get on with things.**

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_Set some years post-finale, at a summer palace of the fire lord that I invented because I wanted there to be a cliff down to a beach._

The Honorable Thing

She kisses him underneath the velvet sky, the clouds rolling like waves and sea-foam around the moon that is not yet full. She kisses him although she has to stand on tiptoe to do it, and his mouth underneath her own is firm and her blood rises to his touch . . .

He pushes her backward. The sand skids against the bottoms of her feet; for a moment she is afraid that she will fall, but she regains her balance and she stares at him, her fingers rising to flutter around her neck, her cheeks, her lips.

_No_, she thinks. Zuko has spun away from her, his back heaving, and tears rise up and trickle weakly down to her chin, the taste of their salt making her choke. No because he is right, because she has Aang and he has Mai and if there is one thing that Zuko truly prizes it is . . . honor . . .

She says his name (_I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry_) and his head snaps up over his shoulder and she can see the curve of his cheek in the moonlight and she reaches out to him (_please, no, please, I'm sorry_) but his eyes turn from her to the cliff-face, to his castle, to his wife. She cannot breathe around the lump in her throat and she has ruined everything and she never meant to (but she did, but she wanted to) and now she will have to leave again, after hardly having seen him, because he was standing _so close_ to show her the stars.

"Go away," he growls, but it is he who goes, shoving past her to the steps carved into the pockmarked stone, and she is left alone on the beach with the sand cooling around her toes and the face of Yue high above her, sharing in the pain of being too late, of loving too soon.

When Zuko appears at the South Pole a year later with his marriage annulment clutched in his fist, she kisses him again.


	5. Push and Pull

_This can be post-finale or somewhere in-series, whatever you want._

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Push and Pull

She is terrifying.

Back and forth, water-whips sprouting from her shoulders, knocking down men as if they were made of wood. Daggers of ice, razor-edged spikes, glass-like shimmer over her ears and neck, and cold, cold, frozen stare. Twirling weaving dancing sliding _bending_ and through it all the power to stop, to twist her fingers and every one of them will be hers, writhing before her or dropping silently into harmless crumpled heaps.

He thinks he loves her.


	6. And Love Comes Back Around Again

This one was pure shipper fun to write. Don't try to figure out the timeline, it'll give you a headache. The title is from a Vanessa Carlton song.

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_Takes place on Katara's 80th birthday._

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And Love Comes Back Around Again

The hands that gripped the bowl were old, speckled with spots of brown, the skin wrinkled and folded like the blankets of an unmade bed. _Eighty years_, Katara thought. _Aang's hands will never be as old as mine . . . but then, they never were_. She sent a stream of water trickling downward over the curved rim, washing away the suds and the final specks of food from the morning. Aang's death no longer gave her pain: he had lived a full life, and gone willingly when the time came. It would be lying, however, to say that she did not miss him.

From outside Kya's voice suddenly increased in volume, sending _"Keep your feet pointed at a right angle!_" ringing through the open window. Katara smiled and reached for another bowl, adding the first one to the growing row of clean dishes beside her. Her daughter—and the rest of the village—had been planning a surprise party for her for weeks, and last night her Bumi and her Tenzin and his family had arrived when they thought she had been sleeping. Having her children so close and not being able to see them was hard, but it was sweet, the idea for the birthday party, and she pretended ignorance and let them carry on. She didn't doubt that Kya's oh-so-spontaneous shout had been a ploy to cover the sound of exploring children. According to Tenzin's last letter, Jinora was getting into _everything._

Around midday one of her little healers came in to ask her to look at his snow sculpture (Katara bit back a laugh: it was almost clever) and Katara good-naturedly followed him out onto the bending court where she was greeted with a cheer and a thunderstorm of applause. She gasped and jumped and acted as if she hadn't suspected a thing until Pema said wryly that it was no use pretending she hadn't seen any of this coming. Katara winked at her and scolded Tenzin for dragging his hugely pregnant wife half-way across the world, and Kya (who had been looking rather crestfallen) pried Bumi away from the sea prunes to tease him.

The party was in full swing and Katara was navigating her heaping plate through a knot of dancers when she heard, off to her left, a sound she had not expected. She turned, mindful of her food, and pushed back through the swaying couples to where she _thought_ she'd recognized the voice of one particular aggravating firebender, hardly daring to believe it. It was well that she did not; when she finally found the source she saw that it belonged to a golden-eyed Fire Nation youth, about sixteen, in what looked to be a brand-new United Forces uniform. One of Bumi's prodigies, perhaps. The way he tossed his head when he spoke was familiar, and Katara knew without asking that this was Iroh, Zuko's grandson. He still had something of childhood's roundness about his face, but Katara could see that in a few years he'd be handsome enough to break many a young girl's heart. Handsome enough now, it would seem, considering the way twelve-year-old Korra was hanging upon his every word.

Perhaps it was her thoughts from earlier that day, but Korra's posture reminded Katara strongly of Aang's when he had been that age, watching her as she demonstrated a waterbending form. It was not often that the new Avatar reminded her of the old—they were so very different—but she was glad to see it, once in a while. She reached up to to touch her mother's necklace. Her fingers found bare skin; a sick pang went through her and she scrabbled at her neck, sweeping the snow in front of her with her toe for a trace, any trace.

"I didn't steal it, if that's what you're wondering," said a voice by her ear. Katara jerked her head up, but Iroh was still gesticulating at Korra. With flick of her wrist she sent a spurt of water up behind her, and was rewarded with a yelp and a splutter. She whirled around, smirking, plate forgotten, and found herself staring up into the face of one soaking wet fire lord.

"Zuko!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. He grumbled something about even the drinking water being frozen in the South Pole but embraced her in return, sliding a hand under the furs of her hood to cup the side of her head.

Katara drew back and looked him up and down, holding tightly to his forearms to keep him from pulling away. She felt herself grin. She had no delusions about her own self; she no longer possessed the supple skin and lithe body that she had at fourteen. But Zuko had always been a fine-looking man, and the years had done nothing to change that. Perhaps he had a few more creases in his brow, or a little more padding about the waist than he had the last time she had seen him (what had it been, eight years? Nine? They'd written to each other most every week, surely it could not have been that long?), but didn't everyone she met, now?

Zuko smiled at her and withdrew his hand from her hood. Her mother's necklace dangled before her from the tip of his mitten, twisting lazily around itself in the white puffs of Zuko's breath. "I knew it had to be this when you started looking around frantically. I figured it had probably only just come untied, and considering the amount of clothes everyone around here has to wear to keep their skin from turning blue, it probably wouldn't have gone far . . ." he laughed when she snatched it back from him, sticking out her tongue, and bared his teeth in a mock snarl.

He was shivering badly by then, so Katara made him stand still and bent all the water back out of his clothes and his hair and pushed him before her to the bonfire in the center of the field, peppering him with questions: yes, he knew his grandson was here; no, he hadn't driven the Fire Nation to ruin yet; and no, that didn't mean he was planning to any time within the next few months. They had gathered a sizable audience by the time Katara had found an empty bench and waved him onto it, easing herself down next to him and stretching her feet out in front of her to feel the warmth of the flames through her boots.

"There you are, Mother!" said Tenzin wearily, pulling two-year-old Ikki behind him. His daughter shrieked and started running, Tenzin stumbling along behind her. "Gran-gran!" She clambered up into Katara's lap and began tugging at her hair, kicking her legs wildly around her.

"What kind of a fish are you?" teased Katara, tapping her granddaughter on the nose. "I don't think I've seen the kind that swims through the air instead of the water!"

"I can!" Ikki crowed, and launched herself skyward, hovering uncertainly for a few seconds before crashing back down into a swell of snow.

"Another one?" Zuko asked as Ikki darted off. "I'm beginning to feel outnumbered."

"Apparently," Tenzin replied, adopting a mournful air, but Katara had raised him and she could tell how proud he was. "Ikki, come back here . . . oh, hello, Lin."

"Hello, Katara." Toph's daughter handed a plate of food to Katara and another to Zuko, doing a masterful job of pretending that Tenzin didn't exist. "I saw you dropped your other one, and judging by the way Naga's sniffing around it I don't think you'll be getting it back. Hello, Uncle Sparkles."

Zuko winced but didn't comment, and the conversation turned to the work Lin had been doing in Republic City (the usual triads, ruffians, and petty thieves; a couple of idiots yammering about benders and equality). Soon they had gathered half the tribe in a heated debate concerning the proper treatment of a woman who had stolen another woman's Satomobile but given it back with a full tank of gas and the formerly non-working left headlamp fixed. It was absolute chaos, especially considering that every third new person had to have it explained to them what exactly a Satomobile was (Katara herself wasn't too sure on the subject—she didn't see how the thing could move forward with an engine right out in front of it and not go up in flames), and then Bumi made a joke about mechanics and engine grease, and Katara was leaning into Zuko and laughing so hard she must be bruising her ribs as the wit shot every direction around the circle of people, getting steadily worse and worse as the sunlight leaked away from the tops of the mountains and the darkness filled its place.

They had gotten as far down as rhyming coat nail with look so pale when Zuko wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her.

And_ spirits_, it felt good.

"Ewwww!" Jinora shouted. They broke apart and everyone was laughing again, them two most of all. On the other side of the fire Korra was getting a glint in her eye like she wanted to try something similar on Iroh sitting next to her, so Katara called her forward and had her demonstrate a few of her more impressive waterbending moves. Korra leapt up, scheming forgotten, and as she lifted the first spinning column Katara ducked under Zuko's arm and stayed there.

Later, because she could tell Lin was getting interested however much she pretended she was hiding on the outskirts, she told Korra to show some of her earthbending, and of course the girl wanted to follow with a display of firebending, even though she hadn't officially started training for it yet. The resounding "NO!" from every bender in the group (and Korra's parents as well) sent her off pouting until that great polar bear-dog of hers bounded up and tried to use her for a chair.

It was late when the fire finally began to burn out, and the guests began making their good-nights and trickling away to warm homes and soft beds. Katara remained on her bench, half way to sleep herself in Zuko's embrace, a delicious sense of comfort humming through her from her hairline to her toes.

"Are you going to be fire lord for the rest of your life?" she asked him, burrowing her face into his shoulder. Zuko snorted and jerked upright: he'd been dozing for the past half-hour against her, his chin sinking lower and lower into his chest. When Katara repeated the question he sighed.

"No. In a few years, my daughter will be ready to take my place. She's ready now, truth be told, but I want to set some things in order first." He yawned into his closed fist.

"What will you do then?"

"I don't know. I've always wanted to travel. Not for politics, not having to be royal, but just seeing how everything is."

Katara pulled back so that she could meet his eyes. "Then do that. You could . . . say you were an ambassador, or something, if anyone asks."

"Maybe I will." Zuko yawned again, making Katara yawn with him, and they both smiled.

He pulled her closer. "Come with me?"

Katara shook her head. Her bones had seen enough adventuring, and Korra needed looking after: the more eyes watching _her,_ the better. Zuko didn't seem to mind and bunched his hand up in her hair, so she tugged him forward to kiss her again.

"After you get tired of wandering around in aimless circles, will you come back here?" Katara asked him. "There's an empty room beside mine in the bending school."

"Yes," said Zuko. "I will."

.

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_Uncle Twinkletoes, Uncle Snoozles . . . Uncle Sparkles. C'mon, it only makes sense._

_I do realize I've been mentioning Aang a lot. I'll try to tone it down, but— whatever my/your/our thoughts about it— there remains the fact that Kataang is canon, and so I have trouble bringing myself to disregard it. Also, I happen to like Aang as a character, and I think that the non-romantic part of Katara and Aang's relationship is a beautiful one._


End file.
